Razor Girl (16 page)

“So…this isn't official business?” Brennan glowed with relief. “How about a cup of conch chowder, on me?”

“That's exactly where it'll end up, if I eat it.”

“Jesus, Andrew, not so loud.”

“He got thirty-two stitches,” Merry told Brennan, “so he's cranky today.”

“What happened?”

“Nineteen stitches,” said Yancy. He was eyeing the baseboard beneath the table, where a hale cockroach stood glossy and fearless. “Does that one have a name?”

“Aw, fuck.” Brennan whipped off a shoe and began whaling at the insect, which escaped easily.

Merry excused herself and went to the ladies' room. After Brennan re-tied his shoe, he placed a greasy fifty-dollar bill beneath the spoon at Yancy's table setting. “Andrew, don't write me up for one lousy roach, 'kay?”

The bribe offer was a Stoney's ritual. Yancy made Brennan pick up the fifty and asked him if he knew a man called Blister. Brennan said no.

“Then where'd you get that thing?” Yancy pointed at a doll-sized tunic hanging on a wall hook.

“I bought it from some lady come in last night and tried to sell me a friggin' mink.”

“That was a mongoose,” said Yancy.

“I told her I had no use for such a varmint but I'd pay ten bucks for the purple jacket. She said okay, it's a deal.”

“That's Blister's wife.”

“The jacket's for my dog,” Brennan seemed obliged to explain.

Yancy heard Merry calling from the restroom and he went to investigate, Brennan tight on his heels. Merry opened the door for them and said, with breezy satisfaction, “Gentlemen, look what I spied.”

A trail of small dark pellets lined the dingy tile near a broken tampon machine.

“Capers!” Brennan squawked indignantly. “Some jackass from the kitchen must've spilled 'em there!”

Merry turned to Yancy and said, “This I find unacceptable.”

They departed before their chicken entrées arrived. Yancy's midsection was on fire from the stitches; in the car he doubled over, arms tight across his waist. Merry fed him another pain pill.

Back at the duplex, the Ryder truck was gone. Yancy told Merry to park on the next block over. He selected a spot from which they could surveil Blister's new backyard, where the restless Clee Roy was tethered to a crooked swing set.

Merry said, “We should set it free, the poor thing.” She grabbed one of her energy drinks and downed it like a shooter. “How'd I do back there at the restaurant? Spotting those teeny mouse poops all by myself.”

“Great eyes. You're a natural,” Yancy said. “Do me a favor.”

“What—go down on you? I'm not sure that's proper stakeout procedure.”

“Pin your hair, zip up the fleece and take a stroll past the duplex. See if anybody's home. And not a sexy walk, all right? A plain dull walk, like you're on your way to the post office.”

Merry said, “What if I don't have a dull walk?”

“Try to blend in with the neighborhood is all I'm saying.”

She clicked her teeth. “Challenging.”

“Yes, I'm well aware.”

She set off in a flat-footed stride, arms swinging, head down. Yancy would have laughed but his eyes were elsewhere, watching for Benny the Blister. He had a hunch that the man who stabbed him was the same one who fatally accosted the late Abdul-Halim Shamoon.

A gray bank of knife-edged clouds overtook the sun, flattening the afternoon light. Yancy got out and leaned against the car, waiting for the Percocet to kick in. He'd always loved the breeze from the Stock Island docks, the sharp tang of salt, iced fish and diesel. A pair of gray doves trilled from their perch on a telephone wire, and Yancy whistled back.

Looking between the houses he saw Merry coming down Blister's street—despite her best acting she still stood out, like most beautiful women when they try not to be noticed. Nearing the duplex she shortened her steps.

“No, no, keep going,” Yancy coached under his breath.

Unexpectedly she slipped out of sight. He struggled back into the car and started the engine. Moments later the mongoose began yipping, and Yancy saw Merry sprint in her rhinestone flip-flops across the barren lawn. Somehow she climbed the fence hauling an object that looked like an oversized toilet seat. The instant she was back in the car, he hit the gas, heading for Highway 1.

“Nobody home,” she reported breathlessly. “Boxes all over the place. Are you good to drive?”

As Yancy spun the steering wheel he experienced a bolt of pain just shy of agonizing. “Whatcha got there?” he asked.

Merry showed him. “It was lyin' on the ground near Clee Roy. I found it when I went to pet him.”

“Did I not mention he was a fucking mongoose?”

“I felt super-sorry for him, Andrew, all lonely and tangled in his rope. Anyway, I thought this thing might be a clue.”

“Looks more like Clee Roy's chew toy.”

Merry made a snarky face. “You're welcome,
Inspector.
”

The item she'd taken from Blister's backyard was a lifebuoy of the donut style customarily hung on boat cabins. The Styrofoam was pocked with animal tooth marks, but the name on the lifebuoy was still legible:

Wet Nurse.

Yancy said, “Stop pouting. We'll check it out first thing tomorrow.”

“Gosh, I feel so honored.” Merry flung the life ring into the backseat, pulled off her flips and planted her bare feet on the dashboard.

Mona unpacked the rest of the boxes before walking to the Comcast office to sort out a credit issue. Blister expected full cable and Wi-Fi when he came back from wherever the hell he went every day. Mona wasn't in love with the duplex, but she was glad they weren't on the run from the law. Blister swore up and down that nobody had seen him spook the Muslim off the Conch Train. As for the dude he stabbed, Blister said it couldn't possibly have been a real cop or he'd already be locked up at county, no bail. That made sense to Mona; it also explained why the dude didn't have a gun. He probably got sent by somebody Blister owed money to, a list that included half the dirtbags in Monroe County. Mona didn't dwell on it; she was simply glad that Blister had decided to stay put. Island life suited her.

Upon returning from Comcast she peeked in the backyard hoping the mongoose had gnawed through the rope and run away—but no such luck. The night before, Blister had searched the apartment for the critter's silly purple jacket. Mona didn't tell him she'd sold it at Stoney's; her husband was aware she didn't adore his unusual housepet.

“Look on the bright side of the penny. We won't never have no snake problem with Clee Roy 'round,” Blister would say.

“Hell, I'd rather have snakes,” Mona would fire back. “Least a snake won't get into my fuckin' Froot Loops.”

The Stock Island duplex was cheaper than the apartment on Petronia, though Blister had to burglarize a Dollar Store for the cash to cover their first, last and security. The Ryder truck he had hotwired at Trumbo Point. Mona had quit asking where he disappeared to all day long (sometimes even overnight). She wasn't the jealous type and, besides, he always came home salty and rank. No woman worth worrying about would go near such a man.

Mona had met Blister while working at a massage parlor in Central Florida where she drew the line at hand jobs and even then insisted on wearing an oven mitt. Blister had invited her to accompany him to Key West, his grand plan being to outrun a bench warrant for undisclosed felonies in St. Augustine. Halfway down the turnpike Blister had let on that he was driving a motorcycle that wasn't technically his, but Mona had been a good sport about it. They ditched the bike in the Aerojet Canal and hitchhiked the rest of the way.

Blister's first decent score in Key West was a 48-inch flat-screen that became their domestic epicenter. They shared an addiction to daytime game shows, Ellen, Maury, Steve Harvey, all the CSIs, beauty pageants, cage fights and documentaries about polar bears. However, their tastes diverged radically when it came to Blister's favorite reality program,
Bayou Brethren,
which Mona thought was bogus and stupid. She didn't care for Buck Nance and couldn't wait for Krystal to get wise and dump him. His shit-heel brothers were just as worthless, in Mona's sulfurous view.
Brethren
had triggered loud arguments in the apartment on Petronia because it was broadcast during the same time slot as
Learjet Vet,
Mona's beloved animal-rescue show, which they couldn't record because Blister had broken their DVR in the process of shoplifting it.

Mona hoped her husband's juvenile worship of the Nance clan had peaked with the idiotic tattoos, which he'd hidden from her by living for days in the same rancid shirt. One afternoon she'd peeled off the garment after Blister fell asleep during a Maury rerun, and was mortified to see the words “Hail Captain Cock” stenciled garishly across his grimy shoulder blades. In a fury she rolled him over, only to be confronted by the cycloptic rooster.

It was about the same time when Blister began spending more days at large. The main reason Mona didn't bust his balls for being away so much was that it left the TV under her sole control; she could catch up on all her missed episodes of
Learjet Vet.

When Blister returned home on this night, she was watching the one where Dr. Zeke Nekrotos lands his surgically outfitted Lear 60 in foggy northern Greenland to set the fractured femur of a yearling caribou. Blister snatched up the remote and pressed the Mute button.

Mona rose up saying, “I will kick your ass, Benny Krill.”

“Hold on now—this here's important. A game changer.”

“Put the fuckin' sound back on.”

“Baby Buns,” he said, “listen to me. I'm gone be on TV!”

Mona rolled her eyes. “Lord, you're drunk. Gimme the damn remote.”

“I ain't had one sip. You are lookin' at Buck Nance's new twin brother!”

“Oh. So you lost your mind is all.”

“No, no, I'm joinin' the family. It's official.”

“My ass,” Mona said. “Not even a dog your age could get adopted.”

“Tune in and see. We're gone be rich.”

“That ain't funny, Benny. That's just mean.”

He shivered with excitement. “It's the God's truth, Baby Buns. I even got me a agent.”

Y
ancy heard the Porsche coming from a mile away. When it stopped in front of his house, he stood at the doorway beckoning.

Deb's bandage was gone though her beak was still scabby from the flaming e-cig. She had dressed low-key in a tailored dark pants suit and black flats. The lawyer boyfriend wore cream-colored slacks, a light blue golf shirt and a cranberry blazer. Yancy no longer had the energy to call him anything but Brock. For some reason he looked tenser than Deb.

The couple was under the impression their diamond engagement ring was still missing, which meant that the thugs who'd removed it from Yancy's kitchen had pocketed it. He shouldn't have been surprised, yet he was. He should have felt responsible, yet he didn't. The stone would still be safe in his refrigerator if Richardson hadn't sent the two Jersey boys.

Now the lawyer was bitterly recapping the discovery of tribal teeth on his property, and his travails with the pesky state archeologist. Yancy made a mental note to deliver a five-pound sack of stone crabs to his helpful dentist and also to “Dr. Whitmore,” his teacher/actor friend.

“They're saying the excavation work might take years,” Richardson said, “and we don't want to wait that long to build. Deb and I don't.”

“That's right,” Deb murmured, distracted by intimate articles of apparel scattered on the disemboweled sofa. Richardson noticed them, too.

“You have company?”

“She's at the gun range,” Yancy said. “Practicing.” In truth Merry had gone to the drugstore for more gauze and sterile tape. Yancy's swathed midsection was concealed by an XXL Florida Gators sweatshirt.

Richardson said, “Let's cut to the chase. I want to buy your house, Mr. Yancy.”

“It's not for sale. You can call me Andrew.”

“The offer is two-fifty.”

Yancy crowed at the insult.

“Take the money,” said Deb, “if you know what's good for you.”

Richardson added: “We're going to bulldoze this shitbox and put up something fabulous.”

Yancy was in a contemplative drift, possibly due to the medication. He said, “I'm curious—what on earth do you two see in each other?”

Deb's eyes flared and she looked away. Her fiancé frowned.

Yancy slipped another pill under his tongue. “Unless you come to your senses, prepare for a future of restlessness, disappointment and betrayal. One morning you wake up praying you're alone in bed, except you're not. Lying beside you is someone with whom you've exhausted all avenues of conversation.”

The couple stood mute and rigid.

“Now's the time to reevaluate your commitment, before it's too late,” Yancy continued. “Besides ritually overspending on jewelry and clothes, what do you lovebirds really have in common? This ridiculous villa you want to build, it's only a diversion from the brewing domestic shit storm. Clearly neither of you is enthralled by the other, or by this particular way of life. Brock thinks of the house as a foolproof real-estate investment. Deb, you think of it as a place to get away from Brock. Meanwhile the incompatibility question hangs—does it not?—like a toxic fog. My advice is to separate on good terms and bolt for the exit.”

Deb was seething. “Don't you take this shit from him!” she cried at her fiancé, who wheeled on Yancy and said:

“Two-seventy-five is my final number. That's all cash, brother.”

Yancy said, “It's not for sale, you poor doomed fuckwit.”

“Hit him or something!” Deb whinnied.

The lawyer squared up and shook a finger in Yancy's face. “My friends from up North will be paying you another visit.”

“They definitely aren't your friends,” Yancy said. “Hey, can you guys help me haul this sofa to the road?”

Another unmannered departure followed, capped by a cliché of squealing rubber. Deb and her man were plainly a poor fit, although Yancy's interest in enlightening them was purely selfish. Once they broke up, the mansion-building project would be scotched and the lot would go back on the market. Yancy's transcendental sunset view would be preserved, at least for a while. With any luck, the next buyer would have a soul.

Yancy took his laptop out to the deck. There, hanging on a rail peg, was the pitted life buoy that Merry had swiped from Blister's yard. The
Wet Nurse
remained a mystery. In Florida, boat registrations list the owner but not the name of the vessel. According to the databases, no motorized watercrafts belonged to anybody named Benjamin Krill—hardly a shocker, given Blister's disdain for legalities. Yancy poked around the Internet long enough to find pictures of nine different boats named the
Wet Nurse,
at which point he gave up
.

Merry returned wearing a white lab coat she said she bought at a thrift shop, to help put her in a nursing groove. The rest of her medical uniform was panties and sandals. As she tended Yancy's stitches one of her earrings dropped to the floor. When she bent to retrieve it, a bright little bumblebee peeked briefly from under her coat.

Yancy said, “You went back to Wikky? Please tell me that's just henna.”

“No, it's real, because that's how I roll.” Merry turned around to show off the tattoo, mid-slope on a heartbreaking butt cheek. “Am I the first girl to do this for you, Andrew?”

“Permanently scar themselves on a whim? Yes, I believe so.”

“It's not a scar, buddy. It's a commitment.”

“That would explain the ‘A.Y.' ”

“Know why I put your initials down there? So I'll never forget what a pain in the ass you were.”

The sight of the bumblebee gave Yancy an erection that Merry taunted as proof of his lust-crazed intent. He shuffled to the kitchen on an imaginary errand. The point, as it were, couldn't be argued—he had begun to fantasize about diving under the sheets with his houseguest. Yancy worried that pain was all that stood between him and a fateful lapse of judgment. Thank God for the knife wound.

Merry drove him to the docks at Garrison Bight where he finally made headway
.
Captain Keith Fitzpatrick, a friend who ran deep-sea fishing charters, told Yancy he'd seen a cabin cruiser called the
Wet Nurse
anchored near Sunset Key. Fitzpatrick guessed the boat's length at thirty-one feet and described it as a crumbling mess, possibly abandoned.

“Can you take us to see it?” Yancy asked.

Fitzpatrick had to say no. He was up to his bloody elbows in a forty-pound cobia that he was filleting for his two clients, who hovered rapturously. Composite-flooring distributors from Chapel Hill, the men had invited Fitzpatrick to the Turtle Kraals for beers in hopes he would forgive them for arriving hungover that morning, vomiting into the bait tank and dozing through the only strike of the day. It was the captain himself who'd reeled in the fish with which the flooring executives had victoriously posed, the photos instantly zapped to their Anglergram pages. Fitzpatrick would have preferred the company of Yancy and his sweet-smelling companion, but he perceived that the defective Carolinians were withholding his tip until he showed up at the bar.

Yancy, who understood the grueling politesse of charter fishing, was sympathetic. Farther along the dock he and Merry approached a long-haired, part-time guide who for fifty bucks agreed to take them to Sunset Key. His nickname was Gack and he ran a 23-foot bay boat called
Marley's Ghost
in tribute to Bob, not Dickens. The clues were the knit Rasta cap and a scorched glass pipe on the console.

As they skimmed through a bracing chop past Trumbo Point, Merry slid closer to Yancy. For him there was nothing better than crossing open water with a woman at your side, and he was reminded of the warmth of Rosa's body on their morning rides in the skiff. He wondered again how she could trade such times for a butcher's block in Scandinavia.

The run to Sunset Key was short, and they found the
Wet Nurse
anchored exactly where Keith Fitzpatrick had seen it. The cabin cruiser indeed was in lousy shape, a faded, flaking live-aboard. Yancy asked Gack to circle slowly. They watched for movement but saw nothing but a lone seagull on the bow.

“She's too low in the water,” Gack observed.

He was right. The
Wet Nurse
was squatting and stern-heavy.

Yancy said, “Let's go check it out.”

“I can't put you on board, mister.”

“Why's that?” asked Merry.

“ 'Cause it's not your damn boat. I won't abet an act of piracy.”

Yancy was touched by the stoner's respect for maritime code. “Just get us a little closer, okay?”

Gack pulled parallel to the cabin cruiser but maintained a gap, in case Yancy was plotting to leap to the other boat. Merry had the same worry and tightened her hold on Yancy's arm. They called out several times but nobody stirred on the
Wet Nurse.
Rime on the hull's windows made it impossible to see inside, where the bunks would be located. Above deck there were no fishing rods, dive gear, not even a mop. A sloshing was audible as the boat rocked on its frayed anchor rope.

Merry asked, “Is that thing sinking, Andrew?”

“So it appears.”

Gack stood up balancing on his seat, to gain a better view of the other boat's interior deck. He said, “Damn, there's a foot of water aft.”

“What do we do?” Merry asked.

“Call the Coast Guard, then go home. Ain't nobody on that boat.”

“You don't know for sure,” said Yancy. “Let me jump aboard.”

“Stay where you are.” Gack hopped down and reached for his handheld radio. “We'll give this another five minutes.”

It didn't take that long. Before their eyes the
Wet Nurse
disappeared in a hushed blue-green swirl. The bird on the sinking bow didn't bother to fly. It waited for the sea to rise beneath it and then floated off, a whitish puff riding the wave crests.

When the roiling went calm, Gack said, “That was fucking impressive.”

Merry could hardly believe it. The water wasn't deep, but the surface was choppy and churned. She couldn't see the shipwreck on the bottom, only formless dark patches. Gack was already on the phone with the Coast Guard providing GPS numbers and a description of the lost boat. Soon random items began floating up—Styrofoam fast-food containers, plastic cups, beer cans, seat cushions, moldy life preservers, a fire extinguisher.

“I need that,” Yancy said, pointing at a smaller object, tan in color and crowned in shape.

Gack grunted. “What the hell for? You can buy a new one in town for like ten bucks.”

“I don't want a new one.”

Merry hung on to Yancy's belt loops while he painfully stretched over the gunwale to pick up what he'd spied amid the debris from the
Wet Nurse.
It was a banded Panama hat like the one reported stolen the day after Buck Nance went missing. Yancy placed the dripping hat in the front hatch of Gack's boat.

“You ain't even gonna put it on?” Gack said.

“It's evidence.”

“Get out.”

Merry said, “For real. He's a police inspector.”

“Shhhh!” Yancy made a cutting gesture across his throat, as if it was supposed to be a secret. Merry acted mortified and said never mind.

Gack fell for it. In a low voice he asked Yancy, “So what's the deal? Are you, like, undercover?”

“Not anymore.” Yancy threw a reproachful look at Merry.

“Is it a coke thing, or what? I won't tell anyone,” Gack said. “You think there's a dead body on that fuckin' boat?”

“We're about to find out. You might want to hide that bong, captain.”

“Oh, shit.” Gack went into a scramble.

The flashing blue lights of a patrol vessel were approaching fast from the harbor. Gack pocketed the pipe, cinched his grotty hair into a ponytail and began tidying the deck. Merry asked him not to tell the Coast Guard officers that Yancy was a plainclothes detective.

“It'll screw up our whole case,” she said.

“You a cop, too?” Gack whispered.

“Dude, I'm the informant. Without me, he's got nothin'.”

Yancy couldn't get over what a pro she was when it came to this stuff. Absolutely stellar. He would miss the fun, when she was gone.

The Coast Guard crew was impossibly young and efficient. Within minutes a diver was in the water marking the site with bright buoys. Yancy studied the pattern on Gack's fish-finding sonar, which showed that the
Wet Nurse
had settled on its side, twenty-six feet down. The diver wasn't gone long. He surfaced with an upright thumb, lifted his mask and said, “All clear.”

A petty officer told Gack that he and his passengers were free to go.

“Why'd she sink?” Yancy asked.

“Probably the bilge fittings went bad. Happens all the time.”

Yancy didn't believe faulty bilge fittings sank the
Wet Nurse.
His doubts were confirmed when he overheard the Coast Guard diver telling the rest of the crew about the weird thing he'd seen on the sunken boat.

Two empty sets of handcuffs, locked to the bunks.

Jon David Ampergrodt gleefully thumbed a new sheaf of Nielsens showing that
Bayou Brethren
nailed a massive 23 percent share in its time slot. The show was hotter than ever. America did not miss Buck Nance.

More good news arrived via phone from Sheriff Sonny Summers in Key West: Buck was no longer a suspect in the Conch Train killing. Detectives had interviewed a local tattoo artist who'd recently inked “Hail Captain Cock” across the shoulders of a two-bit career criminal named Benjamin Krill. The sheriff said Krill had moved out of his apartment and was on the lam.

“In other words,” Amp said in a level tone, “your people aren't out looking for Buck anymore.”

“They are not,” the sheriff confirmed. “We've got a tight budget down here, Mr. Ampergrodt. Very limited resources.”